The tools used to boot Linux are changing. Specifically, the Grand Unified Bootloader is now officially in maintenance mode only, and GRUB's developers have abandoned the original GRUB in favor of an entirely rewritten package, known as GRUB 2. Discover GRUB 2's new capabilities and how to use it.

[vent]
I do not like Grub2. I had few problems with grub, but Grub2 has been very unstable for me. 3 different Grub2 problems bit me on 1 laptop

1. By default, it would detect drives by UUID, and bomb when it couldn't find the drive (even though the UUID was correct). This is a known issue. I had to turn the UUID feature off.

2. There was a line with a "search...." statement in it. This also caused a problem, so I had to figure out how to get rid of it.

3. There was some line at the beginning that had to do with recordfail. I had an unclean shutdown, that I guess caused some file it was looking for to not exist - again a fail to boot. I had to edit some file in /usr/lib/ to get this to go away.

The bottom line is Grub 2 had configuration files spread out all over the place that you must edit if you have trouble. You can't just edit grub.cfg, as it will be regenerated with kernel updates. You have to find the right files to edit that are used as source when grub.cfg get recreated.

I don't think it is stable enough yet to be abandoning the grub line, but that seems to be just they way it goes in the Linux world. Maybe I'll have to go back to Lilo!!
[/vent]

Grub2 has been a major PITA! I can't even install newer versions of Ubuntu on most any machine anymore.

Grub2 may have more potential, but let us realize that potential before we use it wide-spread.

I, too, find it outright idiotic to edit ten different files to do what once only required editing one file. I finally, after HOURS of trying, managed to even get Grub2 to update properly enough to get an image to display instead of the ugly default look.

I'm sure the hassles will improve with time, but that should have been a priority prior to release.

People in the Linux community need to try and make things easy for those outside of the community to join and be proficient. That is what made BeOS so great. With BeOS, everything was clean and simple and worked as you thought it should work from reading a couple lines of a description.

It would also be nice if Linux installers would show all available OSes and permit configuring ( graphically ) the boot loader for the next boot. It shouldn't take hours of studying by a well-experienced computer tech to figure out how to change the order of operating systems and add a background.

Of course, on Ubuntu, I figured out that I had to 'sudo apt-get install grub2' which was counter-intuitive, considering grub2 was installed by default ( but apparently not the utilities... ).

On a related note, that makes me wonder why so few ( any? ) Linux distributions allow customizing the installation.

Ubuntu's installer could simply ask where you were to determine most everything they ask at the start of the installation.

And why do I have to select Monterrey, Mexico when I'm in Texas? That makes no sense to me ( yes, I know the actual reason, but it should be hidden from the user ).

@The loon: Ubuntu's installer could simply ask where you were to determine most everything they ask at the start of the installation.

Perhaps, but Ubuntu asks *far* fewer questions than Win 7 during installation. Ubuntu also has the courtesy to ask all of its questions up front and then complete installation unattended, rather than ask a few questions, install a bit, reboot, lather, rinse, repeat. And it leaves you with most common apps pre-installed, rather than almost naked like the competition.

I'm elated when I report various issues with a product, and someone informs me that they have had no problems. Now I can sleep at night!

Seriously, my main complain is _NOT_ that Grub2 is a worse product. I've had trouble with the original Grub (especially when the BIOS mis-reported a drive size), and I have had troubles at times with LILO. This is normal. In my case, I think it had to do with the particular Tablet PC I was using. Some Tablet PC's have a wierd way of initializing there devices at startup.

Anyhoo, the point is that when something invariably goes wrong (which happens with all software - I write software for a living ;} ), the means by which you resolve these issues is quite tortuous in Grub2. By having its configuration spread out in multiple places (at least 3 that I know of), and multiple files in each location, they have created quite a puzzle for the end user. At some point, a good front-end to all of this will be created (there is one I have looked at so far), then this will become less of an issue.

Really, I would see Grub2 _currently_ as more appropriate for Fedora. For Ubuntu, which emphasizes the "Just Works" philosophy, I do not believe it is stable and friendly enough for the end user. Just my $0.03 (my opinion is worth 50% more).